The Verge

Image: Walmart Walmart’s website and app have a new look, and I have to admit that it looks a lot cleaner than Amazon’s. The retail giant swapped out a more cluttered interface for one with bubbly blocks displaying various departments and deals across the store.When you scroll down on the homepage, you’ll see even more shopping categories, along with specific items tailored to upcoming holidays, events, or the current season. Meanwhile, searching for a product yields several rows of products matching your search that you can scroll through horizontally.Walmart executive vice president Tom Ward describes the change as “a more engaging way to browse” through Walmart’s inventory, noting that it surfaces “items that matter most to [customers] at any... Continue reading…

Image: Mengxin Li / The Verge Nobody wants them. Nobody likes them. Why is the worst UI element of all time ubiquitous again? Continue reading…

Image: Mengxin Li / The Verge Sites designed to exploit users’ gambling addictions are going to be a little predatory. Poker Now somehow turned out to be different. Continue reading…

Daniel Radcliffe in the original series of Harry Potter movies. | Image: Harry Potter/Warner Brothers A new TV series based on the original seven Harry Potter books could be on the way, according to a report from Bloomberg citing two individuals with knowledge of the as-yet-unsigned deal. It’s reportedly hoped that the series will be a cornerstone of Warner Bros. Discovery’s new streaming strategy, which will involve replacing its existing HBO Max and Discovery Plus platforms with a new combined service.Warner Bros. originally adapted the Harry Potter books into a series of eight films starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint between 2001 and 2011. But according to Bloomberg, turning each book into a whole season of TV will “allow the writers to delve further” into the original stories.One TV season per bookBut since... Continue reading…

The rear I/O is similar, but the leaked dock seems to use USB-C to connector a laptop. | Image: eBay A new leak suggests the next Surface Dock might use Thunderbolt 4 over USB-C to connect to Microsoft’s laptop lineup, rather than the company’s proprietary Surface connector. Windows Central reports that the device is codenamed Bergamo, and says pictures of it have leaked via this eBay listing.While other accessory manufacturers have embraced USB-C as the single connector of choice, Microsoft still prefers to use its own Surface connector to dock its laptops with external monitors and other accessories. It’s meant that devices like the $259.99 Surface Dock 2 only work with Microsoft’s own gear, an unfortunate limitation given the cost. Image: eBay One of the Surface Dock 2’s USB-C ports appears to have been... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google introduced a limit on the number of files that you can create and save in Drive, as reported earlier by Ars Technica and CNET. The company confirmed to The Verge that the change would have allowed you to can create a maximum of 5 million files in Drive even if you pay for extra storage. But Google rolled the change back soon after, saying it would “explore alternate approaches to ensure a great experience for all.”“We recently rolled out a system update to Drive item limits to preserve stability and optimize performance,” said Google in a tweet. “While this impacted only a small number of people, we are rolling back this change as we explore alternate approaches to ensure a great experience for all.”The 5 million file cap only... Continue reading…

The Verge Apple is reportedly laying off a small number of people from one of its retail teams, according to reports from Bloomberg and Business Insider. It’s currently not clear how many people will be affected, but Bloomberg says the number is “likely very small,” and both outlets say that, internally, the company is pitching it as a way to improve its operations rather than as a cost cutting measure.Still, until now, Apple’s lack of layoffs has set it apart from many big tech companies that have announced major cuts. Those include:

Asus ROG Ally | Image: Asus Considering the date on the calendar and the lack of a price or other details, my first response to Asus ROG (Republic of Gamers) surprise-announcing a handheld gaming machine was that this must be an April Fools’ Day prank.Still, this Asus ROG Ally launch video was just a little too good to simply shake off — the link to Best Buy and the use of real games like High on Life, Moving Out, and WRC Generations seemed unusual for a prank, and now we know why. After waiting a couple of days, Asus has confirmed it is a real device (well, as real as a product can be without a launch date, detailed specs, or price) and says gamers can sign up with Best Buy for details on when preorders will start.According to Asus, the Windows 11-powered ROG... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Update, 6:30PM ET: The retweet labels are back on the web (it may take clearing your browser cache along with a refresh to see them again, which you can do in Chrome by pressing the Shift button plus clicking refresh). Twitter PR did not comment on the labels’ disappearance or their return. The original article follows below.Looks like it’s going to be another normal week on the bird site: people’s “Following” timelines are seemingly being flooded with unlabeled retweets from people they don’t follow, and a lot of people are seeing a Doge icon where the company’s bird logo used to be.Regarding the first one, no, your Following timeline isn’t suddenly being run by the algorithm behind the “For You” one. Twitter has simply stopped... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Late last week, Hulu started rolling out a redesign for its TV apps, which changes how you navigate through the interface. The previous version (which some people still have) had the search, Home, TV, Movies, News, My Stuff, and Hubs buttons across the top of the screen. Now, those navigational buttons will live on the left.Hulu’s top-bar design has always stood out from the crowd in a bad way. Even my wife, who isn’t that into tech and doesn’t generally comment on UIs, has complained about it. The problem with the old UI is that, in general, using a streaming app these days involves scrolling up and down through a massive list of content, realizing you don’t want to watch any of it, and then jumping to another section.Unfortunately,... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Google is testing out a price guarantee program for Google Flights that will pay you money if the price of a flight goes down after you booked it through the service. The feature is currently available as a “pilot program” in the US (get it?) for specific flights, according to a Monday blog post, but it could be a compelling reason to use Google’s tool the next time you’re searching for a flight.When you’re using Google’s tool, some flights will have a little shield icon with a dollar sign. If you book that particular flight through Google Flights, the company says it’ll “monitor the price every day until departure.” If it drops, you’ll get the difference back. GIF: Google It’ll only show up on flights that... Continue reading…

Image: Alex Castro / The Verge The US Department of Justice is suing Activision Blizzard because of claims the publisher instituted an anti-competitive soft salary cap for players in its Call of Duty and Overwatch esports leagues. The publisher has agreed to settle the suit.The complaint details what the two leagues called a Competitive Balance Tax. Under the tax, if one of the franchised teams paid its players over a limit imposed by Activision Blizzard, the teams would be fined and have the fee distributed to the other non-offending teams. In theory, the Competitive Balance Tax was to prevent richer, better resourced teams from gobbling up the best talent with high salaries (i.e., what I’d call the “2023 Boston Uprising rule”). But it seems that, in practice, this... Continue reading…

Image: Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony is introducing new tags in the PlayStation Store that provide an overview of accessibility features you can use in a game. The new “Accessibility Tags” will start to roll out globally this week in the store on PS5, Sony’s Hideaki Nishino says in a post on the PlayStation blog.The tags will provide information on accessibility options for things like visual, audio, control, and gameplay features. They could be quite useful if you want to make sure a certain game is able to accommodate your specific needs. You can get an idea of what the Accessibility Tags look like in this video from Sony.The tags will “gradually” roll out this week, and Nishino says they’ll launch with games like Days Gone, Death Stranding Director’s Cut, Ghost... Continue reading…

Image: Disney Moana, which was first released in 2016, is already being adapted for a live-action film. Disney revealed the new project with a video featuring Dwayne Johnson, who plays Maui in the animated movie.“Like its animated predecessor, the film will celebrate the islands, communities and traditions of Pacific Islanders as seen through the eyes of a young woman eager to pave her own path,” Disney wrote in a press release. “Moana’s journey of self-discovery and reflection on the lives of her ancestors won hearts worldwide, as did her newfound friendship with an exiled demigod named Maui.” Disney didn’t say when the new film might be released.The new Moana will join Disney’s growing slate of live-action remakes, including The Lion King, Beauty... Continue reading…

Image: Jaime Nogales/ Eyepix Group/Future Publishing via Getty Images Coachella kicks off next week, and if you want to watch it at home, you can pick from one of six streams at once on YouTube throughout both weekends, YouTube announced on Monday. That’s double the three simultaneous live streams you could catch last year.This year’s Coachella lineup is pretty good, so I bet there will be a lot of good shows to watch on YouTube throughout the weekend. I’m personally interested in performances from Gorillaz, Wet Leg, Boygenius, Björk, and the ever-elusive Frank Ocean, and I’ll be doing my best to tune in throughout the weekend. That said, if you want to see a show, you should do your best to catch it live — YouTube is only promising that “highlights” from “many of the weekend’s performances” will be... Continue reading…

Lee Yeon and Jeon Do-yeon in Kill Boksoon. | Image: No Ju-han / Netflix A John Wick-style action film about an assassin balancing her bloody career with being a single parent. Continue reading…

The new green screen feature in Microsoft Teams. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is adding a new green screen feature to Microsoft Teams today. It’s designed to improve Teams’ existing virtual backgrounds by increasing the sharpness and definition of the backgrounds around your face, head, ears, or hair. While it works best with a dedicated green screen, you can also take advantage of this feature with a solid color green or a clear background wall that’s behind you.“The screen or background wall must be flat without stains or other irregularities,” says Jan Steberl, Microsoft Teams program manager, in a blog post. “Users must apply a background effect in Teams meetings to enable the green screen effect and should carefully select the backdrop color so that the effect is applied correctly and better... Continue reading…

The iPad Air’s M1 chip makes it more than capable for even demanding 3D mobile games like Genshin Impact. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The best iPad for most people is back down to its best price ever. Apple’s latest iPad Air with 64GB of storage is on sale for $499.99 ($100 off) at Amazon and Best Buy. At this price, it’s just $50 more than the 10th-gen iPad but offers better performance and a slightly larger 10.9-inch screen. The midrange iPad Air utilizes an M1 processor for speedy, everyday app usage. While it favors Touch ID built into the power button over the more convenient Face ID of the iPad Pros, the latest Air feels pretty “pro” in most other ways — with second-gen Apple Pencil compatibility, add-on keyboard options, and a USB-C port. The Air ticks most of the boxes needed for iPad usage, from Apple Arcade gaming to content consumption and even getting a... Continue reading…

In this image from September 2006, the Antarctic ozone hole measured 11.4 million square miles (29.5 million square kilometers). | Image: Universal History Archive/ Universal Images Group via Getty Images Chemicals that were banned after they punched a hole in Earth’s ozone layer are still building up at an alarming rate in our atmosphere, according to research published today in the journal Nature Geoscience. The chemicals were once widely used in air conditioning and refrigeration but were supposed to be phased out globally by 2010.Scientists were surprised to find that concentrations of several types of those chemicals have climbed since then, reaching a record high in 2020. The culprit could be alternative refrigerants that were meant to replace the ozone-depleting substances, the new research suggests. An even bigger problem? Researchers can’t find where all the chemicals are leaking from.The ozone layer has managed to make a... Continue reading…

Image: Ronald Martinez/Getty Images Just as CNBC scooped yesterday, Ari Emanuel’s Endeavor Group is acquiring World Wrestling Entertainment and will spin out a new publicly traded company that combines it with Ultimate Fighting Championship. The deal values WWE, which for decades has been owned and run by the McMahon family, at $9.3 billion and the Endeavor-owned UFC at $12.1 billion.Both companies expect the agreement to close in late 2023. When it does, the result will be a combined sports entertainment powerhouse with fervent, loyal audiences for each brand. WWE just wrapped up WrestleMania, its biggest live event spectacle of the year, over two nights at SoFi Stadium. The company claims it reached a combined attendance of 161,892 people in the stadium. The event... Continue reading…

Image: James Bareham / The Verge Nintendo has started offering free repairs for faulty Joy-Cons in more parts of Europe, regardless of warranty status, as first reported by Nintendo Life. On a support page on Nintendo’s UK website, the company says it will fix Joy-Cons inflicted with the dreaded stick drift “at no charge” in the UK, Switzerland, and the European Economic Area (EEA) — even if the company’s two-year warranty has expired.Although Nintendo has offered free repairs for out-of-warranty Joy-Cons in North America, Latin America, and France, it never extended the policy to the UK, Switzerland, and all of the EEA until now. The company previously only repaired faulty Joy-Cons in these countries for free if they had an active warranty, and it’s unclear how long... Continue reading…

Image: Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Last week, General Motors shocked the car world when it announced that it would be restricting access to Apple CarPlay and Android Auto in its future lineup of electric vehicles. And so far, it appears to be alone in that decision.GM said it wanted to move away from the smartphone projection systems to offer customers a more integrated experience that sees Google Maps, Google Assistant, Spotify, and other apps run natively on the car’s infotainment display.But CarPlay and Android Auto are wildly popular; Apple says nearly 80 percent of new car buyers insist on the feature before making a purchase, while independent surveys suggest slightly lower but still robust levels of demand.The rest of the auto industry gets it. The Verge... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla delivered 422,875 of its electric cars to customers in the first quarter of 2023, including 412,180 Model 3 and Y vehicles and 10,695 Model S and Xs, the company has announced. That’s a 36 percent year-over-year increase versus the first quarter of 2022, a 4 percent increase from last quarter, and a record for the company, according to Electrek.The announcement doesn’t give much of an indication for the increase; for that we’ll likely have to wait for Tesla’s full financial results on April 19th. But news of the delivery numbers follow a series of price cuts across the US, Europe, and China impacting various models across Tesla’s range. In January, for example, Tesla reduced the price of the long range Model Y variant by 20... Continue reading…

Google’s Nearby Share app is available for Windows 10 and up. | Image: Google Google’s AirDrop competitor, Nearby Share, is now available on Windows as a beta app. After announcing plans for Nearby Share on Windows at CES 2022, Google has finally shipped the Windows app as a beta to allow Android users to share photos, documents, files, and links between Android devices and Windows PCs.The Windows Nearby Share just needs to be installed and configured to start sending and receiving files between Android and Windows devices. Google is supporting Windows 10 and up, but ARM-powered Windows laptops aren’t supported right now. You can setup Nearby Share to allow sharing with everyone, just your contacts, or limit it to your own devices.“Nearby Share Beta works with your Windows PC whether the app is open on the... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Tor Project, the organization behind the anonymous network and browser, is helping launch a privacy-focused browser that’s made to connect to a VPN instead of a decentralized onion network. It’s called the Mullvad browser, named after the Mullvad VPN company it’s partnered with on the project, and it’s available for Windows, Mac, or Linux.The Mullvad browser’s main goal is to make it harder for advertisers and other companies to track you across the internet. It does this by working to reduce your browser’s “fingerprint,” a term that describes all the metadata that sites can collect to uniquely identify your device. Your fingerprint can be made up of simple things, like what browser and operating system you’re using, to more... Continue reading…

The Huawei Watch Ultimate doesn’t look like an Apple Watch Ultra, but it’s got almost all the same features. | Image: Huawei You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out where Huawei got the inspiration for its newly announced Watch Ultimate. It’s clearly Huawei’s not-so-subtle answer to the Apple Watch Ultra, and now, we know that similarity extends to the price tag, too. Starting tomorrow, the Ultimate will retail in the UK and Europe for €749 / £700 for the “expedition black” colorway and €899 / £800 for the voyage blue version.If you missed news of the Watch Ultimate, it’s likely because the company currently has no plans to launch the device in the US. (That Huawei ban is still kicking in 2023.) While the company once had a decent foothold in the wearable market, the ban has since limited its reach to US audiences for all but the most dedicated of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Will Joel / The Verge In 2023, it’s hard to love classical music. Not because of the music itself — it’s just difficult to find it. Searching for George Gershwin is as likely to bring up his own performances as it is to bring up music he composed that’s performed by other artists. The problem is that, in the metadata, classical music doesn’t just rely on the typical stuff like artist, genre, song title, or album title. There are soloists to consider, and composers, and conductors, and pieces performed by an orchestra and a choir. Apple Music Classical, based on the Primephonic app that Apple acquired in 2021, addresses the problem with the metadata and has me wondering why more apps aren’t this rich in the stuff.I didn’t realize how little classical music... Continue reading…

Adding Zigbee and Thread to Home Assistant has never been easier. | Image: Chris Person For years, I have been waiting for an excuse to make the transition to Home Assistant. With the Home Assistant’s Zigbee and Thread dongle, I had that excuse. Continue reading…

Western Digital is about to launch a new Xbox storage expansion card. | Image: Best Buy Microsoft appears to be readying new Xbox expandable storage options from other manufacturers. A new Western Digital 1TB expansion card for Xbox Series S / X consoles has been spotted early on Best Buy, priced at $179.99. It’s the first time we’ve seen Xbox expandable storage that’s not manufactured by Seagate.Microsoft originally launched Xbox expandable storage cards nearly three years ago with its Xbox Series S / X consoles. The 1TB cards were priced at $219.99 and manufactured exclusively by Seagate. While we’ve seen 512GB and 2TB options appear from Seagate, prices have stubbornly remained high, despite similar storage for PS5 consoles dropping significantly. Image: Best Buy Western Digital’s Xbox expandable... Continue reading…

All Adventure Series e-bikes (like this RX) have the battery on the down tube for lower center of gravity and improved handling. | Image: Super73 California’s Super73 now offers more ruggedized models of its Super73 Z, S, and R series of e-bikes and a new K1D electric balance bike for kids — and parents stoked at the thought of putting their four- to eight-year-old on a vehicle that can go over 16mph.The so-called Adventure Series of e-bikes brings a refreshed design, suspension, gear box, seats, tires, and lights across Super73’s existing Z (entry-level commuter), S (multipurpose cruiser), and R (flagship power) e-bikes. All the electric bikes in the series feature front suspension, while some offer fully adjustable front and rear suspension. S and R models also had their battery moved to the down tube, which should improve handling thanks to a lower center of gravity. ... Continue reading…

A Sidewalk coverage map claims the network reaches over 90 percent of the US population. | Image: Amazon It turns out that I have a low-power, low-bandwidth, long-range IoT network all around me, ready and waiting for my smart gadgets to jump on. Today, Amazon revealed just how far its Sidewalk IoT network penetrates the average American neighborhood.And it’s deep.The company’s first Sidewalk coverage map claims that over 90 percent of the US population can access the now public network (it’s limited to the US only). Using a Sidewalk developer test kit supplied by Amazon, I drove around my town to confirm this data and, over three days of traveling more than 40 miles, found that the connectivity was surprisingly strong in my corner of South Carolina, even in the wilds of a national forest. Image: Jennifer Pattison... Continue reading…

The Jetson Rogue. | Image: Jetson Another hoverboard is being recalled due to fire risk. According to a notice on the US Consumer Product Safety Commission’s (CPSC) website, the 42-volt Jetson Rogue is being recalled because the lithium-ion battery packs in the hoverboards can overheat.A fire marshal in Pennsylvania determined that a Jetson Rogue was the point of origin for a fire that killed two children, the CPSC’s notice says. The parents of the children are suing Jetson and Target, where they say they purchased the hoverboard, alleging the two companies should have known of the risk of fire-related injuries due to the design of the Jetson Rogue. (The parents originally sued Walmart, but amended their complaint to sue Target.)The CPSC also says that “there have... Continue reading…